


put your fingers back to the keys

by typefortydeductions



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Darcy is AWESOME, M/M, everybody wants to help bucky, protect bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 06:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1677434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typefortydeductions/pseuds/typefortydeductions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world finds out about the Winter Soldier, Darcy tries to show Bucky just how much his recovery means to people, and Steve finds himself increasingly grateful for the globalized community of the 21st Century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put your fingers back to the keys

It’s inevitable, really. The combination of the leaked SHIELD and HYDRA files, along with any power they had to crush the press cycle, and the sheer amount of blurry footage of Bucky in DC means it’s only a matter of time before people put two and two together. Reactions are mixed – some welcome Bucky back with open arms, calling him a war hero, but the words ‘traitor’ and ‘untrustworthy’ are bandied around with increased frequency on daytime chat shows. Bucky stays quiet through it all. Pepper releases calm, controlled statements that go some way to tamp down some of the more extreme rhetoric, but still the debates rage on. And Bucky stays silent.

Steve catches him watching the news at night, blank face betraying nothing. Steve turns it off every time, earnestly telling him that it’s all nonsense, that none of it is true, and Bucky stares back at him, and shrugs. He never tells Steve he’s right. Never tells him he’s wrong, either.

Sam tells him to wait it out, that Bucky needs time to adjust, and Steve knows he’s right – but he hates that Bucky does this to himself – hates that Steve can’t do anything to stop him. In the end, it isn’t either of them that pulls Bucky out of his silence – isn’t even Nat, although she’s been invaluable. It’s Darcy, who bounds into the meeting room at the tower one day waving a tablet like she’s won the lottery.  
“Hey! Bucky! You gotta look at this! The hashtag’s been trending for weeks, but it’s only just become, like, an actual movement and stuff! They’ve got this whole letter-writing campaign thing going on, and there’s art and, like, teddy bears I think? Something about revamping Bucky Bears from the war? I didn’t really get it, but, it’s awesome and—“ she stops, mid-flow. “You know how to use a tablet, right? They covered that in 21st Century 101? You just—“ she waves her index finger “kinda scroll.” She reaches over Bucky’s shoulder, tapping the screen he’s staring at mutely. “See?” Bucky doesn’t say anything, but he nods. His eyes are wide as Darcy scrolls, occasionally stopping to excitedly point something out to him. And then suddenly he pushes his chair back, leaving Darcy to stumble aside, and all but flees from the room.  


……………………………………………………………………………

  


Steve waits behind, afterwards, after Darcy had explained what on earth was going on. He sits with the tablet, scrolling through fierce messages of support, selfies prominently featuring prosthetic limbs, long discussions on mental health and accountability. And all of it – all of the positivity, the anger - the love – all of it is tagged with #protectbuckybarnes. Steve stays there for a long while, just sitting. Thinking. He’d known that not all the reaction to Bucky’s return had been negative, but he hadn’t – he hadn’t known. Not really. Not that people felt like this.

Bucky is sat on the couch when Steve walks into their apartment. He’s staring at his hands, but his head jerks up at the sound of Steve’s footsteps. His eyes are red.  
“I—“ he swallows, clenching his jaw “it’s too much, it’s too—“ he swallows again, clenching his fists. “they – they don’t understand what I did, not really, they don’t know they don’t they don’t--” his nails are digging into the palms of his hands and Steve moves over slowly, curls his fingers over Bucky’s, straightens them out.  
“They know, Buck. They’ve read the files, they know what happened. And they know it wasn’t really you, that it wasn’t your fault.” He runs a finger along Bucky’s jawline, tilts his head so that he can look into Bucky’s eyes. “They’re not trying to pretend it didn’t happen, Buck. They know. And they love you anyway, just like I do.” Bucky chokes a laugh.  
“Hope they don’t love me exactly like you do, otherwise we gonna have a fight on our hands.” He grins shakily and Steve knocks their shoulders together.  
“I could take ‘em, jerk.”  


……………………………………………………………………………

  


Steve makes the video that night. It’s short, fumbling, and he’s fairly sure he misuses the word ‘hashtag’ at least once, but it goes viral within minutes, and the letters start arriving within days. Long, heartfelt treatises about PTSD from ex-servicemen and women, crayon drawings with attached snaps of little kids with prosthetic limbs, grinning broadly and often clutching Bucky Bears in their arms. There are declarations of support, promises that ‘if the government ever tries to capture you, you can totally hide out at mine’ (Bucky blinks, asks Steve if these kids realise how much danger they could be in, and stares, baffled, at the accompanying description of their spare room.) Bucky reads them all, replies to as many as possible, and Steve often walks in to find him surrounded by a sea of paper. 

He keeps all the letters, piled carefully in boxes underneath their bed. He sends the kids selfies back, often with Steve looking amused in the background. He sticks their drawings on the fridge, refrains from pointing out that, as a highly trained ex-assassin, he’s highly unlikely to be in a situation where a 12-year-old can protect him better than he can protect himself (although he does point it out to Steve, several times), gives Sam’s number to returning soldiers (until Sam, politely, informs him that there is, in fact, an official number for the VA). 

The letters start trailing off after a few months, but Steve figures they’ve done their job. He doesn’t forget about them, exactly, but they aren’t the overwhelming presence they’d been before – which is why Darcy’s second tablet attack comes as such a surprise. She plonks him down at the table, hands him the device, and presses play. Steve watches, bemused, as Bucky’s familiar face appears on screen, hands nervously scrubbing through his hair. He’s wearing a Captain America shirt – and not the one Tony had bought him as a joke, and that Bucky had subsequently defaced – several times – whenever Steve had done something particularly rash. It’s remarkably clear of scribbled Sharpie insults, and that more than anything clues Steve into the fact that this is something serious – not just another ridiculous Vine or Instagram post. 

“I—“ onscreen, Bucky rubs his metal arm, running his fingers along the ridges “I guess I don’t really know where to start with Steve Rogers. Me and him – well, most of you know we go back a long way. And most of you know he used to be a scrawny little thing, always gettin’ into scrapes. Always defending other kids – kids who couldn’t defend themselves – not that he could, neither. An’ I used to have to rescue him, every single time.” He laughs, grins wryly at the camera “I can’t count the number of times I found him bein’ beat up in back alleys – or outside bars, or behind the school, when we were kids. He was always lookin’ out for the little guy, even when he was one. Always wanted to do the right thing.” Bucky pauses, ducks his head. “And the thing is, that hasn’t changed. Still makes idiot decisions that mean I gotta save his ass, cause he’s just gotta do the right thing. Can’t help it, s’just the way he is. Wouldn’t be Steve, otherwise. But the thing is, you guys said you wanted to help me and that’s—“ his breath hitches, and he rubs a hand across his eyes “I don’t have words for that. But sometimes people forget that, even though he’s not that skinny little guy anymore, Steve needs helping sometimes, too. An’ I was wondering if you guys would—if you guys would do that for me.” The screen goes black, and the words #protectsteverogers appear. Steve stares at them until the video ends.  
“I don’t—“ he turns to Darcy “I don’t—“ She grins gleefully.  
“Your boy just broke the internet, Cap.” She tips her head sideways “And your brain, by the looks of things. He’s trying to help – trying to give you what he got, what you gave him.”  
“Yeah, I.” Steve rubs his head. “I got that.”  


……………………………………………………………………………

  


He doesn’t actually say anything to Bucky that night, not exactly. Just reaches over, clasps both of his hands.  
“I always got your back, Buck. Just like I know you got mine.” Bucky swats his hands away, calls him a sap, but he’s smiling when he leans in to kiss Steve, and Steve figures they’re going to be just fine. It won’t be the same as it was before the war, and there will always be days that hurt, but him and Bucky? They’re going to be just fine.


End file.
